The Life and Art of Mark Twain

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Biography of Mark Twain
Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835 under the name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens as “the sixth living child of John and Jane Clemens” in the town of Florida, Monroe County, Missouri (Cox 7). While there his father operated a general store and tried fruitlessly to create an invention to bring him riches. Therefore, before long, the store failed and John Clemens moved the family to Hannibal, Missouri which Mark Twain would make famous. Little Sam, as he was called in his younger years, was never particularly close to him family with the exception of his mother who he greatly admired and looked up to. At this time Twain five siblings, his three brothers “Orion, Benjamin, and Henry, and his [two] sisters, Pamela and Mary” (Cox 9).
A prevalent influence in his young life was slavery as his father either “owned or rented slaves” whenever the money was available (Cox 9). He felt great sympathy for the slaves and had difficulty sleeping one night while he listened “to the groans of a captured runaway slave tied up in a nearby shack (Cox 13). Despite his strong feelings and later condemnation of slavery, when twain was young he was unaware that there was any issue with slavery as no one spoke of it as anything but right, holy, and proper. As he grew older he was still left uneducated to the immorality of slavery, yet he also knew even without foreknowledge that it was wrong. The influences slavery had on him were later very clearly expressed in one of his most popular novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain’s young life was rather straightforward. His only formal education was a private school in Hannibal, which he grew great contempt for rather quickly. Then he spent his summers on his uncle’s farm, wh...

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...marrying Olivia and having three daughters, he began to write his most memorable books and stories yet. He wrote literary masterpieces that forever shook and changed the face of American literature for all time. Because of all of his hardships and his extensive influence in the literary field, Mark Twain was and will forever be one of the greatest writers to have ever lived and impacted the face of literature as we know it.

Works Cited

Cox, Clinton. “Mark Twain.” New York: Scholastic Inc., 1995.
Marshall, Donald G. "American literature." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Marshall, Donald G. "Twain, Mark." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2013. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Twain, Mark. “The Prince and the Pauper.” New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1881.
"Twain, Mark, 1835-1910." ProQuest Biographies. 2006: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 18 Nov 2013.

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